


Custodiet

by palimpsestus



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:12:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Furiosa goes missing, and Max goes hunting. </p><p>A fill for the kink meme prompt that goes: Max has found Furiosa in a dungeon or on a market somewhere far away from the Citadel. She's been badly mistreated, isn't speaking, and a lot more willing to bite and headbutt him than to let him treat the wounds that very much need treating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Crow Road

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt: Furiosa!whump  
> We've seen some delicious prompts and fills with Max!whump. I've love to see something the other way around. 
> 
> Max has found Furiosa in a dungeon or on a market somewhere far away from the Citadel. She's been badly mistreated, isn't speaking, and a lot more willing to bite and headbutt him than to let him treat the wounds that very much need treating. 
> 
> I'm not super interested in exactly what happened to her (that's not where I'd like the fill to focus on). It's OK if it was sexual in nature, but I'd prefer it not to have been humiliation. 
> 
> Mostly I just want Max gritting his teeth and holding down a weak, hissing and struggling Furiosa because her wounds can't wait for her to realise he's trying to help her.
> 
> http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=782018#cmt782018
> 
> _______
> 
> Trigger warning for violence, but Furiosa's whumping is medical related instead of abuse because I couldn't bring myself to put her through that.

“What do we do if we don’t find her?”

Max grunted into his fist, his gaze on the horizon they were speeding towards, and always so far away.

Toast eyed him sidelong. “We’ve been looking a long time.”

The high road arched down beneath their wheels, and Toast eased them into the mud, guiding the Interceptor as they slid and spat into the bog. What she didn’t say, while balancing revs and speed in the mud, was what Max couldn’t help obsessing over, bouncing his knuckles against his lips and bobbing his knee up and down, watching the grey sand of the old Green Place.

After travelling another dozen degrees of the sun, he said, “When we have no more guzzoline, we go home.”

Toast’s mouth tightened into a thin line.

When night came, he took watch, perched on the Interceptor’s roof, his rifle resting across his knees. Toast slept without even offering to watch, sleeping in the driver’s seat with her feet on the passenger’s, her arms tightly folded against the chill of the night. Max could taste blood on his lip, the ragged and worried cut he had been chewing at for days now, where his teeth fit against his flesh. In each moment his twisting, black thoughts crawled around to the object of their search, and dead women under wheels, and unspeakable hauntings, he would dig his teeth into his lip and taste the blood.

Toast drove slow and steady, conserving guzzoline, with half her attention on the mud and half on him. Max couldn’t afford her the courtesy of the return. He chewed on the open wound inside his lip and watched the horizon, the odd blackened and broken tree, the spitting and bubbling pools they passed.

“You see it?” Toast asked, not waiting for him to respond before changing course, weaving the Interceptor across the boggy and sucking ground, toward the spindly creature on the horizon. In reply, Max slid two shells into the barrels of his shotgun.

They gained on the Crow Walker, who ambled on his stilts at a fair pace, cutting across the wettest ground with a strange squawking noise, arching its back as the long legs skittered over the bog.

Toast revved the engine and clipped the left hind leg with the Interceptor’s nose, sending the Crow Walker tumbling in a spurt of grey mud and ragged cloth.

“Max,” she said, but the warning that followed was swallowed as he slammed the door behind him, his boots squelching in the mud toward the creature, still attached to its uneven and broken stilts.

“Max! We need him to talk!”

He snapped the barrels back into place, the crack earning a moan from the creature. Max might have been grinning, bloody toothed and feral. Might have relished that noise, that noise like a demon’s whipcrack promising mighty vengeance. Might have just ignored Toast’s swearing.

The Crow Walker had freed itself from both arm stilts and now was crawling, dragging one broken leg and one long one, not looking back.

There was the steady pfft, pfft, pfft of boots running on mud that told him his girl was thinking fast, and he kept walking as Toast passed him, launching herself onto the back of the Crow Walker with a scream and her pistol cracking over the back of the masked head with sickening force. “I swear,” Toast snarled, slamming the mask into the mud, “If you don’t talk I will _let_ him have his way.”

There are steps to dances that all humans know. And there are steps to dances that only the damned know. Max found his feet slowing, to let her try it her way first.

_Then we kill him._

_Pellets through the skull._

_No, bound to fire and guzzoline._

_Rip his throat out with your teeth and taste that blood for real._

Toast leaned back and fired her pistol into the knee of the Crow Walker, and the scream that came forth was like a cry of joy.

“ _Speak_!” Toast yelled.

Max circled her, raising his fingers off the stock of his shotgun as her black-rimmed eyes tracked him, wide and desperate, fearful for him.

_Little girl. You have no idea._

Max crouched, his knee singing a fierce chorus with the action, and he pushed the muzzle of the sawn-off against the Crow Walker’s mask, pushing it up and off a twisted and scarred face that was still moaning in pain. He traced the shotgun back over the scarred scalp, and he could smell piss in the air. Toast repositioned herself on the Crow Walker’s spine, leaning back just enough to save herself from whatever he was going to do next.

“Pl-l-lease,” burbled the Crow Walker into the mud.

Toast was watching him, unflinching. While he searched his mind for words, she slowly eased some of her inconsequential weight onto the blown out joint, making the Crow Walker scream again. “Tell us where you took her,” Toast said in an even tone. “I’ll shoot you myself. Keep _him_ off you.”

“Will you now?” Max said.

“We don’t have her!” the Crow Walker yowled, a white eye staring down the double barrel at Max’s trigger finger. “We don’t have her she ran we don’t have her we don’t have her we don’t have- _aeiiiieeeee_!”

“I don’t believe you,” Toast said, digging her heel deeper into the joint.

“We took her to the nest!” the Crow Walker shrieked.

_Now we kill him._

_We bleed him like a pig._

_No, stick him in the gut, let him die slow._

“It’s to the north, by a few klicks, please, please . . .”

Max got to his feet, Toast at his side, and returned to the Interceptor.

“You said you’d kill me,” cried the prone figure.

“I will,” Toast holstered her pistol and swung into the Interceptor. “But I need to know you told the truth first.”

They had made it half a klick when three red flares went up in rapid succession, a little to their east, and they changed course without question, Max bracing his arm against the dash, his palm pressing against all the speed and force of the V8. Toast drove faster than their guzzoline and the ground allowed, and he didn’t say a word and neither did she. He chewed on his lip.

“She’s alive,” Toast said when the Valiant came into view down a muddy crest. She was so enraptured by the figures beneath them that the Interceptor finally stuck her wheels fast in the mud. “Go,” Toast said, teasing at the wheel and spitting at the mud that held them.

Max shook his head, and helped dig the Interceptor out.

They were in a basin, one that had stuck the Valiant several times if the long trenches in the mud were anything to go by.

_She’s led them here, even their stilts would be slow going in this land._

He shook that thought from his mind.

“She’s alive,” Toast whispered again, seating herself once more behind the Interceptor’s wheel. “She’s alive.”

Max tasted fresh, pulsing blood on his tongue.

He saw Capable first, saw her come sprawling out from behind the Valiant, her arms windmilling as she sailed backwards and landed hard on the mud, flat and prone, while Toast cried out beside him. Capable was soon followed by a figure, low to the ground and bound in a chain that had been welded to the strap of her arm, whipping like a viper’s tail, the chain coming down hard on where Capable’s head was.

It was by the grace of a hair that Capable rolled out from the blow, and started to scrabble away, while Furiosa’s back arched upwards, chain-arm snapping backwards, the chain sending wet sand spitting up in its wake.

The Ace came out from behind the Valiant, left arm raised to block and defend, but Furiosa had seen it coming and she sidestepped, the chain whipping instead at the Ace’s feet, catching him out and down.

Toast was out and running, barrelling into Furiosa with all her might, catching the taller woman by the chest and barely making her stagger. If it had been anyone else, Toast would have known better, Toast’s training would have told her better, and she would have remained on the fringes like the lightweight she was.

Furiosa sent her flying with one neat and precise backhand, green eyes scanning the horizon, barely brushing over Max, still sitting in the Interceptor. He was seen and dismissed, and he could feel the deprioritisation of his threat, how she rounded again on the Ace and hammered down with her metal hand – welded shut over the chain – and then flesh, then metal, then flesh, Ace barely blocking each blow enough to retreat, heedless of the Valiant looming up behind him. She finished him with a headbutt, breaking the old man’s nose and crumpling him hard against the Valiant’s hide.

“Hey!” Capable was on her feet, circling widely around, aiming for Toast.

Furiosa was quick, reclaiming the ground between her and the girls, dividing them even as Toast slowly stood. Capable was spitting blood onto the mud, while Toast seemed to stagger.

He knew what was coming next.

Furiosa feinted left toward Toast, the one who looked vulnerable, and as Capable leapt to her sister’s defence, Furiosa changed direction and took Capable out with metal fist to the gut, doubling the redhead over and finishing with an elbow to the kidneys.

Max put his hand on the Interceptor’s door, his body leaden and slow as he forced himself out from the car, onto the battlefield of Furiosa’s choosing.

Toast had launched herself again, all rage and love, and again Furiosa used the girl’s speed against her, letting Toast roll over her shoulders and fall to the mud, where Furiosa’s boot caught her ribs fast and sharp.

Max cracked the stock of the shotgun open and Furiosa turned on him, crouched in a fighter’s stance and snarling. With that sound he had made himself a target, so he held the gun up and let the rounds fall to the mud.

She tracked that, and then charged him before questioning why he’d give that advantage up, the chain dragging behind her. Max held his ground, dodging left just in time. With her arm on, she always favoured leading with that weight, and his veer surprised her just enough for him to smack his shoulder against hers. She had an inch of height on him but nothing in weight and she rebounded. While she struggled to spin he kept close, bringing his right arm up to block her next blow, and the shock of all that steel reverberated down his bones and into his heart.

He socked her one to the gut, and brought his foot down hard on her insole, while she roared he heaved into her, wrapping his arm around that damned chain and twisting just enough to jerk her off her feet. From there it was a sweeping kick to her ankles that brought her down and she was on her front in the mud, he on her back and wrapped in her chains, holding her down by force of his weight alone.

“Furiosa, Furiosa,” Toast was crawling toward them. “Please, Furiosa! Stop!”

Furiosa screamed with rage and Max leaned a little heavier on her back, looking to the girls. “You okay?” he asked.

Toast shook that off, a swollen lip and yellowing eye saying otherwise, while Capable dry heaved into the mud. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Blackwater fever,” came a gruff voice from behind them, and the Ace hacked a cough as he limped alongside. “She’s been drinking the water here.”

“Why would she do that?” Capable murmured.

Max could feel his fingers growing slick. Why was not nearly so important as how long, because his Furiosa was bleeding badly.


	2. Stay, Stay

Furiosa was screaming into the mud, her body writhing beneath Max’s weight, and Max feeling his hands slide over her shoulders with the combination of blood and sweat.

These steps were familiar, if echoing oddly in the chambers of his brain, and Max could feel his grip get tighter on her neck, her bones beneath his hands.

“Any time you feel like it,” he snarled, while the Ace fumbled with the straps at her waist. It took both Toast and Capable sitting on Furiosa’s legs to keep her from taking the Ace’s head off with a swing of her heel. This left the old man with the bloodied face trying to unfasten the straps of her arm, his elbow digging holes in the small of Max’s back, and Furiosa roaring all the while.

“It’s not like I’ve done this before,” the Ace grunted, and Max threw a dark glance over his shoulder at the old man.

He would have leaned down to say something, but she was as likely to break his nose with the back of her skull as take any comfort from him. Comfort would have to wait until the fever broke. Still, his thumb ran up the nape of her neck, over the rise and fall of an old brand, and up to the short hair prickling up with sweat and sand.

“Got one,” the Ace announced, and Furiosa groaned, low and heavy in her throat.

Max worried at his lip. He continued stroking the pad of his thumb over her skin, smoothing a path through the sweat-stuck sand.

“Keep her still,” the Ace snapped, as one of the belts got tugged beneath his hand by her squirming.

“Try talking,” Toast advised, her voice thick with pain, “Like you did when we killed Joe.”

“Blackwater Fever steals the person from a body,” the Ace said, managing another delicate buckle and moving to the third. His hands working just beneath the rise of Max’s buttocks, his knuckles occasionally brushing against Max as Furiosa writhed.

Something about Furiosa being so uncontrolled beneath his thighs, about the intimacy of the inadvertent contact, prompted a reaction from his body that made his position even more untenable. He wished he could forget what her skin felt like beneath his, how she moaned for his hands and pleaded for his kiss, all with laughter and reciprocation. This body beneath him might not have been the person he . . . knew . . . but that didn’t mean he didn’t know her body just as well.

“Gotcha!” Ace swept the belts to the side, freeing her ribs from the bindings of her metal arm, and he swore immediately.

“No!” Toast cried out, while Capable moaned low in her throat.

Max twisted to see, momentarily stunned by the red that seeped onto the grey, and then completely stunned by the shortened arm that cracked over his face. He rolled on instinct, heard the surprised squawk of Capable and the pained roar from Toast, and he just caught sight of the Ace taking a knee to the groin before Furiosa was moving, staggering from the felled warriors with her amputated arm pressed to her side, half bowed over as she cut a line toward the Interceptor.

He pushed his hands into the mud and got to his feet, shaking the silt from his hands. At the sound of his steps, Furiosa started hobbling faster. He held out a hand to stop the others from following, if any of them could get up that was, and followed Furiosa at a steady pace.

Talk, Toast had suggested. Never his strongest point. Even as a cop he’d been the backup, and his place now was squarely behind Furiosa and Toast, arms crossed and brooding.

He tried, “I’m not trying to hurt you,” which only made her hobble faster. Considering he’d pinned her to the mud while they’d removed her only weapon and made her bleed, he cursed himself for the thought, and cursed Toast for good measure, muttering under his breath as he pursued Furiosa towards his car.

She reached the Interceptor and tried to open the door, her fingers slipping on the handle, and instead of trying again she rounded on him, teeth bared.

Max planted his boots and held his hands up, shaking his head just a fraction. He kept his body relaxed, his elbows by his sides, his bad knee crooked to save it from the rest of his weight.

Furiosa’s gaze tracked over his shoulders to where he prayed the others were keeping down on the sand. The green eyes twitched back to him and she eased a step to her left, aiming to circle the Interceptor, he guessed.

“There’s water in there,” he said, pointing one finger to the back seat of the car. He took a few steps backwards, and then slowly sat, stretching his bad leg out in front of him and keeping his good leg bent, resting his hand on his knee. “Take it,” he added as she stared at him, eyes narrowed and upper lip still curled back. “It’s all yours.”

She limped another few steps around the Interceptor so she could lean in without losing too much of a vantage point. As she searched for the water, he risked a glance over his shoulder to where the other three were regrouping. Toast had a hand on Capable’s arm, keeping her from chasing closer and Max shook his head once, returning his attention to Furiosa, who had her teeth clamped around the bottle lid.

“I can open that,” he said, pointing again, and she growled in response, clamping the bottle between her short arm and ribs, and fighting the top with her bloody fingers. When the bottle opened it did so with a pop, dropping to the sand and bleeding aqua cola until she snatched it back up and began glugging it down, the water spilling over her cheeks.

“It’s okay,” Max said softly. “There’s plenty more. Drink all you need.”

Her throat bobbed as she drank. She drank so fast she began to cough and splutter, and her face screwed up in agony as her coughs wracked her injured sides. She fell back against the Interceptor in her desperation to get away from him, to be privately vulnerable, far away from his eyes.

Max looked at the mud beside him. He didn’t need to see her to know how her face would clench when her body rebelled, how her eyes crinkled at the corners, her mouth gape, and the pop of the tendons in her neck as her back arched. That was usually followed by a shuddering breath, a laugh that was half weeping, and her lips against the closest part of him she could reach. He started to hum under his breath, something that clung to his memories like a scent, something he had carefully and surgically forgotten, so there were no words, only the melody that bounced beneath his tongue.

Furiosa had sunk to her knees, and was watching him while she wheezed, her fingertips still clutching the water bottle. He could see her through his eyelashes, and he wanted, badly, to reach out and touch her and hold her very close.

The humming hurt, but he cleared his throat and kept on singing the song beneath his breath “No, Kookaburra, No, Kookaburra, share some there with me.”

Gently, Furiosa wedged the water bottle between her knees, resting her temple against the Interceptor’s door. Her fingers began to probe her side, slow, tentative.

His throat felt raw, swollen and tight, like he needed her to embrace him and tell him she was going to be okay, that she was going to remember him. There wasn’t much else he could stand to lose . . .

She hissed through clenched teeth and banged her head against the door, her fingers clenching against her side.

“Hey,” he soothed, while she smacked her head again. Keeping herself from passing out, he thought, sharp pain was good for that. “Hey, it’s okay. You can wash your side with the water. There’s always more.”

She stared at him as though he was a fool and probed her wound one more time, the pain writ large on her face.

“If you let me see,” he said, gesturing to her ribs, “I can stop the bleeding.”

This didn’t seem to penetrate, so he resumed humming, watching as she peeled her shirt up high enough to reveal a ragged scrape of red road rash along her side, and then a shallow slash along her hip that looked more like it came from one of those hooks the Crow People used. It was bleeding, but also blackened and scabbed at the edges, like it had been constantly reopened since she’d earned it. Her eyes rolled closed as she pushed against the road rash, and she sagged against the door.

Max made his move, launching himself on his good leg and pinning her to the Interceptor’s side. He snatched her hand, knowing his fingers could circle her wrist easily, and latched his other hand to her elbow, holding them behind her back and pushing her down on her side, pinning her amputated arm beneath her and holding her strong arm behind her back. He straddled her, using his knee to hold her arms down, and pulled her shirt up far enough to rinse water over the rash. He could hear the others running towards them and he shouted, “Stay back.”

Toast and Capable skidded to a halt, staring at him, while the Ace limped around to the side, tossing him another canteen of water and a small canvas bag of their first aid supplies.

“How long does it take Blackwater fever to clear?” he asked the Ace, reaching for the bag and pulling out a few squares of muslin. He began to scrape the worst of the sand and mud from her wounds, “Sssh,” he murmured as she groaned and kicked beneath them.

“Usually a day or so,” the Ace said. “Depends on how much she drank.”

Max nodded and gestured for them to back off. He wriggled out of his jacket and, with some careful manoeuvring, eased it beneath her so he could clean without fear of immediately getting her wounds muddy again. The water washed his leather as well as it did her skin, and he kept pouring, murmuring sweet nothings under his breath. “I’m sorry, baby, I know it hurts. I’m sorry. I’ll be as quick as I can. I’m so sorry.” As he switched to scraping salve over her sides, he found himself humming again, the same little song.

Verse by verse, with each wind of the muslin around her waist, he could feel her body begin to relax.

Like it was losing its fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also check out ArwenLune's take on the prompt here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4191795


	3. Sweet Silence

He didn’t think she had the wherewithal to remember the Interceptor’s kill-switch bypass, or that she had the strength to pull herself out of the passenger seat after he’d gently laid her down on the leather, but Max was not one for taking chances. He pulled a lead from the battery, closing the bonnet gently to keep from spooking her more than he needed.

Toast, Capable and the Ace were tending their own wounds, the Ace hanging his bloody head and Toast gently probing her bruised stomach.

“How is she?” Capable asked as he approached.

Max shook his head, running his hand through his hair and dislodging clods of mud and blood.

“What do you need?” the Ace asked, spitting red onto the dirt.

Max nodded. He appreciated the old warrior in his own way. Couldn’t say he exactly liked the old beast. After all, the Ace had lived in the old Citadel, and lived well, though Furiosa was always quick to insist he’d been her creature and not the Immortan’s. It might have been that possession that turned him against the Ace, the easy camaraderie and thousands of days shared. The things Max didn’t like to think about got shoved back down, to be guarded by ghosts and ghouls, and he simply listed off his needs to the Ace, finishing with, “You three stay here.”

“Max . . .” Toast still clutched her wounded side while Capable searched in the back of the Valiant. “What are you going to do?”

He shrugged, accepting the bag Capable handed him. “If we can get her to drink enough, maybe her body will fight it off.”

“We don’t have a tube,” Capable informed him, wincing as she felt her own bruises. “We thought . . .”

Max nodded. They thought he’d have taken the tubing and needles, and oh how he wished he had. Wished he’d stopped in their crazed flight from the Citadel, stopped to think about finding her alive and hurt, stopped to think about the blood that coursed through his veins.

But he didn’t like thinking about the blood. Didn’t like thinking about the cage and the thump of his belaboured heart. So he hadn’t.

“Max,” Toast said again. She was staring at him, eyes wide, and she began to follow him as he headed back to the Interceptor.

“No, you stay here,” he held his arm out, and she grabbed at his hand, glancing back where Capable and the Ace were watching them.

“What are you going to _do_?” she repeated, taking a step closer to put her directly within his space. “If she doesn’t live,” she hissed this last, her fingertips biting into his wrist, her mouth turned downwards.

“It’s not come to that yet.”

“And if it does?” She looked over his shoulder at the Interceptor. “You going to leave us? Go and kill them all?”

_Tie them to my wheels and let the V8 destroy them, or just hang them upside down from their stilts and let the blood cleanse her home, or just drive and place a bullet through the skull of every Crow Walker who crosses my road . . ._

“Max!” Toast’s grip was painful. “I can look after her.”

“No,” he said, so loudly Ace and Capable took a step towards them.

Toast stalled their advance with a look and released him so quick he might have been covered in guzzoline and holding a match. “Fine,” she spat through gritted teeth. “Just make sure you tell us before you go tearing off for your vengeance.”

He didn’t watch her retreat, or waste any more time in the no-man’s land between the cars. He trudged back through the mud with his meagre supplies, to where Furiosa was sitting in the Interceptor, watching him with narrowed eyes and tense shoulders. He settled down outside the car, in the mud, and went through the supplies as the sun trailed down beneath the mud-clad dunes, until the others and the Valiant were just shadows, and Furiosa was breathing slow and shallow.

Rest was the greatest healer, rest and relaxation.

Near five hundred days ago, when he’d last caught a bullet to the shoulder, she’d ordered him to her quarters and refused to let him leave. _They’ll think I’ve kept you for fucking_ , she’d teased him when he’d chafed at her restrictions, and then she’d used his pain as a restraint, sat across his hips and rocked slowly, the corner of her bottom lip captured between her teeth, agonisingly slow and unfathomably deep, a branding of sorts, and as vividly remembered by his skin today as the day he’d been gifted it.

He slowly got to his feet and looked in at Furiosa.

She was curled up in the passenger seat, awake, but still. Her knees were tucked up against the door, her hand resting protectively over the bandages he’d applied. She watched him with dull eyes, pale and cracked lips slightly parted.

Max unscrewed a water canteen and held it out to her, waiting for a good while before she reached out and took it, tipping the water against her lips slowly.

“The more you drink, the better you’ll feel,” he said, and though she flinched from his words, water spilling down her chin, she kept drinking. When her strength gave out she gasped and let the bottle fall to her lap, spilling more water out, and her glistening chest heaving with rasping breath. Max gestured for the bottle and then, slowly, taking the bottle from her lap and capping it again. He mimed checking his side, and pointed to her, waiting for her to slowly prod at her bandages and then nod cautiously. He reached for his next gift, a tiny portion of dried fruits, wrapped in muslin and tied with twine, that he carefully unwound before handing over. “Eat,” he said, as she stared at it. The smell of sugar was clinging to the bog’s wind, sharp and cloying. He could see Furiosa’s nostrils flare as she stared at his hand, could see her throat bob as she swallowed.

When Dag had first come up with the trick of drying the fruit out, to make it portable and durable, she had presented it to them all on wooden platters piled high. Little Nux had been clawing at her calves as she walked, desperate for more of the treats he’d been allowed to sample back in the greenhouse. Dag had gently pushed her son back, told him to wait for the others to try it first, because Nux already knew what the food tasted like. The little boy fell silent with lips petted and eyes downcast, but he’d remained silent and patient while his mother handed out coins of dried fruit and shrivelled berries. Max had beckoned the boy over to sit on his knee, and split the first treat with him, while Dag rolled her eyes and insisted the boy was spoiled.

But Furiosa had been more spoiled still. From her first bite she was in love, claiming it tasted of her home, the sharp tang of the sugar, and Max had eagerly split his share between the two, while Furiosa had laughed at his foolishness, and licked her sticky fingers with a pink tongue, sucking the sugar from each one with industrious lips and closed eyes.

The Furiosa who sat in the passenger seat of the Interceptor was wary still, and slow to reach out and take the food. When she did, she snatched it from him, a dry berry spilling onto her lap. She laid the cloth on her thigh and reached for the food, popping a small cluster of berries into her mouth and chewing harshly, with determination.

He could pinpoint the exact moment the taste hit her tongue, the dark and pained expression melting into one of surprise, and then how quickly she began stuffing her face with the fruits.

He smiled and sat back down in the mud. Food and water. That would need to do for now.

Out in the wastelands he never really slept, not the deep sleep he found in the warm, dry and secure heights of the Citadel. He might let his eyes close but not let his head drop. He might sit with his back to the Interceptor, but his good leg always had its foot pressed to the ground in case he needed to run. So when he heard Furiosa’s breath go ragged, he was up and peering in at her.

The muslin square was neatly folded and tucked in between her knees, the fruit gone, and she was lying back against the chair, sucking in gulps of air through parted lips, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her closed lids.

Slowly, slowly, he lifted the door’s handle until the catch clicked and he could ease it open, near soundless. “Furiosa,” he murmured, watching her flickering gaze for any hint of recognition, or even acknowledgement of his proximity. He crouched down, bracing himself with a hand on the chair’s shoulder, just above Furiosa’s. “Baby, I’m here,” he whispered, watching her chest rise and fall in shallow jumps. He knew this dream. And if he knew this dream, he knew this was his Furiosa, and not a feral creature he’d picked up from the wastes. “I’m here,” he sat on the lip of the Interceptor, and longed to reach closer, to bundle her in his arms like he would have done if they were back at the Citadel. He’d kiss her furrowed brow and let his hands roam her back, give her just a breath of the comfort that she gave him. “I’m here.”

Her eyes opened and her body tensed, the last ragged breath  seizing in her throat.

He stayed still, forced himself to be slow and steady, to keep his body unthreatening and all gentle lines.

After a few heartbeats, the set of Furiosa’s shoulders relaxed, she slumped back into the chair and watched him for a few heartbeats longer before she reached for the square of muslin and tucked it between the fingers he braced on the chair.

“More?” he asked.

She thought about this for a moment, then nodded, and watched as he retrieved another bundle from his pack. He held it in one hand, while proffering another bundle to her first. When she reached for the fruit he shook his head and offered the jerky again instead. “You have to eat more than this,” he said, just in case it helped, and with a heavy sigh, she snatched the jerky from his hand. She chewed sulkily, glaring at him the whole time, and took the water he suggested before she got the sweet fruit once more. As she chewed on the fruit she handed him the water back, pushing it against his chest until he took his own drink.

In silence, they broke their night fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay between last chapter and this, unfortunately I got hit with a whumping of my own (and I don't have a Max to tend me - hmmph!)


	4. Dawn

The night was cold and elicited goosebumps from the skin beneath his clothes.  Max had his arms crossed tightly across his chest to keep him warm.

Her moving was instantly in his awareness, the sound of her weight against the understuffed leather of the Interceptor’s passenger seat, the feeling of the air around him as she moved within his space, and when he opened his eyes she was crouching over him.

She sat with a thump in his lap, her hand holding something cold and silvery sharp against his throat, her teeth bared in his face.

His hands had settled on her thighs just as his hands would settle on a wheel if he climbed into a car, a twitch of muscle memory deeply embedded in his mind. He felt the back of his skull resting on the cool metal of the Interceptor, the ache of his knee in the cold, and he felt the heat of her above him. His body was more confused by the knife than anything else, for Furiosa was the way of his life now, and the blade not so much, so he blinked dully at her grimace and waited for whatever judgement she meted out.

Call the others, and she’d kill them too.

Let it be this, if this was where the road led.

She was leaning in closer, the bite of the blade growing sharper against his skin, and he could smell her breath against his lips. The cadence of her breathing was just a little faster than the prospect of the kill warranted, and her hips ground forward against his as she leaned in, her lips parting just a little.

There are dances we all know.

“It’s me,” he whispered, the exhalation causing a trickle of blood to seep from the line across his Adam’s apple. It was hot against his skin as it dripped.

Furiosa growled, low and angry. She twisted the knife quickly so its point was now digging into the soft underside of his jaw, making his jut his head upwards, and she leaned in to taste the blood on his throat. He closed his eyes as her lips fastened around his throat, and focussed on keeping very, very still.

She rocked her hips forward again, and growled as if frustrated by the lack of reaction.

“Knife,” he managed, with his words pushing his skin further into the point.

She growled again, her grip wavering just enough to let him breathe deep. She remained poised above him, her gaze tight on his, the half light of the dawn giving her pale skin a starlight like glow. The knife lowered from his neck and she pressed her cheek against his, inhaling the smell of him. He felt his world hold still for that, for the length of time it took for the smell to travel in her memory, for the spark to hit her, like the smell of her sparked in him.

“It’s me,” he repeated as she leaned back. “You know me.”

She rested her stump on his shoulder to steady herself, her frown turning worried as instincts warred.

He knew madness enough to know how she was feeling. “My name is Max,” he whispered, and her eyes snapped to his, the knife twitching in her hands. “And yours is Furiosa.”

She shifted in his lap, the knife wavering at the edge of his vision, and she pressed harder against his shoulder with her stump. A low noise came from her throat, more of a hum than a moan, questioning.

“We live in the Citadel, where’s there’s water, and green,” Max continued in a murmur, watching the dawn beyond her shoulder. As the light spilled over the mud, it would wake the others in the Valiant, and the girls would make a choice between his life and Furiosa’s sanity.

He could see them in the golden sunlight that was to come, charging Furiosa, ripping the knife from her hand, releasing the feral beast, and bleeding when she won. Because she _would_ win. Nothing he’d taught those girls would be enough to save them from her fear, untempered by her humanity.

And he could see another dawn where they recognised that too and instead of charging her they circled. He could see Furiosa snap and slit his throat, threatened and cornered and with only the fight left open to her. Precious things were not safe around her, she stole wives and hearts and hurts with a shrug of her shoulders, instincts buried so deep not even fever could erase them.

And it would all happen with the rising sun.

He fixed his gaze on hers. “You came here looking for what the Vuvalini left behind, but your party was attacked. You stayed behind to protect them.”

The knife twitched again, resting on his chest now alongside her stump. Her lips turned downwards.

“That’s what you do, my love,” he ran his hands an inch or so down her thighs, closer to her knees, and squeezed. “And I think you beat them, and tried to come home, but couldn’t quite make it. So I’m here. We all came looking for you.”

She huffed under her breath and rocked her hips forward again, wanting closer, pressing their stomachs together. She couldn’t be any nearer if she crawled inside his skin.

He couldn’t believe she didn’t know him. Somewhere. “Furiosa . . .”

The heavy hilt fell to his lap and he glanced down, flinching just enough to lose his grip on her thighs, and she leaned in to kiss him, pushing him hard against the Interceptor, and bruising his lips with her own, a hungry moan shared between them.

_Knife, you fool._

He wasn’t sure what the ghosts were warning him about until the weight of the blade in his lap reminded him, and he reached between them for the hilt, and relocated it safely to the side. She broke apart, watching the knife sail to her right, within her reach, and her stump twitched against his shoulder.

“Weapons on your right,” he said. “Always.”

She stared at the blade, her thumb tracing slow circles on the side of his neck, idle and unthinking. When she looked away, she rested her forehead against his instead, and closed her eyes.

“Max?” she tested it, her voice hoarse and forced.

He nodded, just a little, still pinioned between her and the car. “That’s me,” he agreed, his own voice none too steady.

“Max.” She latched an arm around his shoulders and nestled her face in the crook of his neck. He watched the sun rise like that, wrapped tightly around her, as the gold flooded the plains. He saw the small figure rising from the shadow of the Valiant, the shaggy crop of hair blowing in the breeze as she advanced.

He might have looked like he was holding a corpse, or like she’d killed them both, what with the knife glinting beside them and the stillness of Furiosa, relaxed so utterly against him.

The girls never saw them like this. They saw them in the day to day, the quick touches of Furiosa’s hand on his back that she snatched like a pup would snatch rolls from the kitchen, or they saw them together in the Rig, or astride their bikes, and weaving a dusty path between one another. The girls never saw them locked behind their walls of stone, where both silent and loud they explored every inch of one another to mark and brand their souls.

The girls never saw that.

He raised his hand just enough to stall Toast’s approach, and just enough to draw complaint from Furiosa, who tightened her grip around his neck.

“Mm’ I don’t remember,” she managed.

He returned his hand to the small of her back. “I know,” he soothed. “You will. I promise.”

He could see Toast saying something to the Ace and Capable. Capable was watching him with her head tilted to the side, the sun lighting the smile on her face, while the Ace argued with the furiously gesticulating Toast.

“The girls need you,” he patted the small of her back, but she didn’t shift straight away, burying further into him before reluctantly turning her head to see what he meant. “Toast. Capable. The Ace,” he murmured. “Your friends. Your family.”

“I don’t . . .”

“You will,” he promised again.

Furiosa ran her stump over his cheek. “Max . . .” she labelled him once more, eyes on his.

He nodded, his nose brushing hers. “And Toast. And Capable. And the Ace. And at home? Dag. Cheedo. Little Nux . . .”

Furiosa was nodding slowly and with shaking limbs she climbed from his lap, leaning heavily on the Interceptor as Max rubbed his bad leg until the blood returned. She offered her arm as he clambered to his feet, and he took it, without putting his weight on it.

“Water,” she rasped, and he reached into the pack for the next bottle, while the others approached, slow, wary.

“Ready to go home?” he asked, pressing the canteen into her hand.

Furiosa took a deep breath and nodded once.

By the time the others reached him, they were moving together again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one kind of got away from me a bit, turns out I'm not so into writing whumped Furiosa as I thought. On the plus side however, feel like I got much more into Max's head this time around. Hope it was what the OP wanted!


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